Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Norse mythology)/Archive 2

New proposal

I've written the draft of a new proposal. I feel it's much clearer than the previous guideline. I also feel it takes some of the comments we've been hearing into account and tries to compromise and please as many people as possible. Please comment and modify as needed. Maybe Salleman could add his new ideas for the representation of alternative anglicizations. I'd like to see that.

If you're completely opposed to the proposal it's probably best that you don't modify it but write up your own counterproposal instead. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

No original research

It seems to me that some of the things talked about on this page are in danger of breaking the WP:NOR. Perhaps a constructive way forward is to list some of the options which have been used by various people who have translated and published a lot of texts for the general public to read (not specialist to specialist) and comment on how they have translated the names etc. It there is one person, or School of people, which has a substantial body of work that covers a wide area, and it is a close fit to the Wikipedia:Naming convention then perhaps that could be used as a standard.

Even if nothing else comes of such a survey it it would at least produce enough information to help make a more informed choice on how Wikipedia editors could progress the issue and probably produce enough information for a page on the history of translations. Philip Baird Shearer 17:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

WP:NOR is surely not intended to prohibit Wikipedia from deciding its own naming conventions. In any case there's nothing wrong with following an external standard. That's basically what we're doing. We've taken the spelling used in works like Ursula Dronke's translation of the Poetic Edda (the best English translation there is, no competition) and Richard North's recent book on Haustlöng (an excellent and very accessible work) and made some minor adaptations. Those are the use of 'ö' instead of o-with-hook and the use of familiar English forms where those exist (like Odin and Thor) in accordance with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English).

Of course other external standards are possible. Jallan proposed the use of the forms in John Lindow's Handbook of Norse Mythology. Those can be seen at User:Haukurth/Handbook. This proved somewhat unpopular because, well. Let's take an example:

We have a Lindow name like "Ögmundar tháttr dytts ok Gunnars Helmings" and Jallan's proposal was to use that in the title. But we also wanted the full ON form with 'þ' so we'd list that too right after the other:

Ögmundar tháttr dytts ok Gunnars Helmings (Old Norse: Ögmundar þáttr dytts ok Gunnars Helmings)

But that looks somewhat confusing. Readers are unlikely to realize that the first version (which includes such characters as 'ö' and 'á') is actually the anglicized form. They'll be likely to incorrectly assume that a spelling which includes 'ö' and 'á' is the original spelling.

The basic problem is that just about every translator or editor uses her own spelling system. I could stay up all night showing you the myriad of systems in use. The only really standard forms are the un-anglicized Old Norse versions, as used in any number of English works. Many of them are scholarly, granted, but then many of us feel that Wikipedia should be somewhat scholarly as well so we're not troubled by that. Of course we should make allowance for Odin and Thor, use redirects liberally, list alternative anglicizations (see Lóðurr) and generally try to please everyone. Please tell us how we can please you. I know you want to see alternative anglicized forms and ascii forms in the lead and I agree with that. How about sound files with the pronunciation of those tough names? IPA transcriptions? A more organized effort to create redirects? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 18:02, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Then add "the alternative Anglicized forms and ascii forms in the lead" to the naming convention. but do not use the term ascii rather use: the twenty six letters of the English alphabet without without diacritics (or "accent marks")

As for the sound files etc nice to have but no in the naming convention

This is not a scholarly environment. It is a general encyclopaedia and you should be writing for the a person who has a well rounded education but is not an expert in the field they are reading about in Wikipedia. If one is an expert in a field then Wikipedia is not where one comes for information on those topics! --Philip Baird Shearer 19:02, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting perspective. Personally I have greater expectations and ambitions for Wikipedia. I have an MS-degree in computer science and yet I often look up computer science issues on Wikipedia. I'm arguably an expert on Old Norse mythology, language and history and even there I sometimes look up things on Wikipedia (from my own articles even; memory is a fragile thing). In any case I think scholarly and accessible can and should go together in the best encyclopedia in the world. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 00:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I am glad to see that people are finally paying attention to this question. As for us who have been working for quite some time on Old Norse matters, it can seem quite discouraging to have arrived at a standard only to a long time later learn that it is deficient. Philip, I wish you very good luck in working out a standard that everybody will be happy with in the long run. Best,--Wiglaf 19:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

There already is a standard: use whatever English language name is most common. CDThieme 19:36, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

That's a useful guideline in many instances but it's not followed mechanically and it's not some sort of card that trumps everything. Wikipedia tends to be more pedantic than that. On CNN you'll hear about the IRA disarmament. On Wikipedia you'll hear about the Provisional IRA disarmament. On CNN you'll hear about Theodor W. Haensch getting the Nobel prize. On Wikipedia you'll hear about Theodor W. Hänsch getting it. The guideline "use whatever English language name is most common" is simply not followed in every case. Similarly we allow the use of CE/BCE notation even though AD/BC is overwhelmingly more common and understandable to more people (I tried asking my wife if she knew what CE/BCE notation in regards to dates meant. She had no idea. And she has a university degree in comparative literature.) But we still allow CE/BCE because many Wikipedians feel it is more neutral in some sense and, yes, more academic. So we do often prefer pedantic, academic and scholarly to what is most common.

In the case of names from Old Norse mythology it's often very difficult indeed to even find out what anglicization is most common. And the question isn't even well defined. Most common where? In books? In articles? In translations of the original sources? On the web? It's a major hazzle to find out for any given name and we're much better off with a general convention.

As for your proposed move to Hodur you have made no attempt to actually demonstrate that Hodur is in fact the most commonly used anglicization. Can you name two books published in this century or the last which uses that form? Can you name one? If you have done any research at all on this then please share it with us. Have you checked if Britannica's Höd might be more common? Have you tried Hoth? Hodr? Hodh? Hod? Hoth? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 20:05, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

And who is going to do the original research to find out which name?--Wiglaf 19:52, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry to but in, but I don't believe Philip Baird Shearer's objections are based on research into Old Norse naming; rather, he is unalterably opposed to the use of diacritics or non-ASCII letters on the English Wikipedia (which he often refers to as "squiggles"). See for instance, the discussion at Talk:Úbeda (a Spanish town) or the survey and discussion that was started six months ago at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English)#Proposal and straw poll regarding place names with diacritical marks. So I doubt that citing Old Norse scholarship will change his opinion about this, because it is a global opinion that applies to all aspects of Wikipedia and all topics. I happen to strongly disagree with him. -- Curps 00:50, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English) page currently has an ongoing discussion on use of German ß. Since this is probably related, you might wish to initiate a discussion there on this topic. -- Curps 00:50, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I came to this page from a link with a reference to Old English. I am not a scholar, but when I read books that talk about Old English and find they use anglicized spellings, I always feel that they are wrong spellings (perhaps because the first book I read used the original spellings). I strongly object to use anglicized forms unless they are extremely common.—Wing 13:51, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it is a bit disconcerting when people object to non-English letters. The English language uses the Latin alphabet, an alphabet with a rich set of additional letters, and I think we should make use of that.--Wiglaf 13:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Introduction

Please can you explian what this means in English?

In articles dealing with Old Norse mythology the spelling of names should be that of standardized 13th century Old Icelandic as found in, for example, the Íslenzk fornrit edition of Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla.

We do not use name in English from the 13th century without updating them so why should an English encyclopaedia be using an C13th Icelandic name? If people working on these articles have taken the spelling used in works like Ursula Dronke's translation of the Poetic Edda (the best English translation there is, no competition) and Richard North's recent book on Haustlöng (an excellent and very accessible work) and made some minor adaptations. The why not say that instead of the above? Philip Baird Shearer 19:57, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, good point. I'll try to clarify this better tomorrow. The point is that the sources of Norse mythology are written in 13th century Icelandic / Old Norse so we just mean that the original names should be used, as per WP:UE when no common English form exists. There's a certain standardized spelling for those which scholars have used consistently since the 19th century. We should certainly emphasize that this is something used in English works so the Íslenzk fornrit reference may not be the best one. Let me sleep on it. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 23:09, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

"There's a certain standardized spelling for those which scholars have used consistently since the 19th century." C. S. Lewis, a great scholar of languages and literature in the 20th century, said he "loved Balder before Christ" (spelling as in original). Did he misspell Balder? Jonathunder 00:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

He wasn't using the standardized Old Norse spelling, he was using an anglicized form. See Old Norse orthography. The idea here is that if the name of Baldr had survived from Proto-Germanic into Modern English it would probably have come out as Balder. That's why some romantically inclined writers preferred that form. Some still do, though it's hard to find a recent translation that uses it. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 15:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I have no position on the Old Norse question, but I wanted to comment on Philip's statement that we update earlier English names. Wikipedia follows the current scholarly norm for Medieval and Renaissance English names, even if they are names of texts involving words whose spellings have changed. See The Shepheardes Calendar and The Faerie Queene. See also the much earlier Hroðgar for a clear case of older orthography preferred to modern for scholarly reasons. There is some confusion here, however, as the pagenames for characters in Beowulf do not follow the same conventions used on the Beowulf page. Chick Bowen 20:40, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

This is on purpose, since the Beowulf page is likely to be read by a wider audience than the Hroðgar page. I have been waiting for some feedback on this choice, since I am having my doubts.--Wiglaf 00:04, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

The spelling of words was not standardised until dictionaries started to be used. I can show you hundreds of documents from the 17th century backwards where the names of people are spelt in more than one way. The most famous of which I suppose is Shakespeare's spelling of his own name. As a general rule one of the spellings, or a later popular spelling of a first and family name, are often used in modern texts instead of all the original spellings in a haphazard manner. For example Chick Bowen uses "The Faerie Queene" as an example, but the author of the tract Edmund Spencer's name was spelt several diffrent ways by contemporaries. Edmund Spenser is just one spelling of his name. Edmond was a common spelling at the time. The family name today is usually spelt Spencer not Spenser (as in the Earl Spencer) and some texts use that spelling. See Annotated Census of Spenser Editions, 1569 - present No 13 for Edmond, and No 2.f and 7 for Spencer. --Philip Baird Shearer 11:33, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

A good point, Philip. This is the case with Old Norse manuscripts too and the reason that scholars developed a standardized spelling to begin with. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 09:41, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Excerpt of comments made in the Talk:Höðr page.

My opinion is that the standard should be to use modern Icelandic spelling rules since Old West Norse/Old Icelandic did not have standardised spelling rules that were uniformly adhered to until recent centuries, so there *is* no uniform set of spelling rules for Old West Norse/Old Icelandic that has any authority superseding that of using modern Icelandic, which logically more people will be familiar with anyway, and also retains a degree of accuracy in the spellings used- English spelling of proper Old West Norse nouns is far from uniform, so modern Icelandic is the best source on which to draw for making a standard here. I also say that liberal use of redirect pages should be employed.

- P.MacUidhir 22:51, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, Pádraic. Just a couple of points.

1. We haven't been moving pages massively to confirm with our tentative standard. Personally I mostly move pages when I want to make some other improvements on them anyway. There are still plenty of articles in the Norse mythology category which do not adhere to our spelling guideline. I was expecting to have consistency (and a collection of near-FA articles) no sooner than 2010 (see my home page for those I've rewritten already). I'm still expecting that if we don't get mired in requested page moves along the way.

Fair enough. I will look more carefully in the edit lists for your account and Wiglaf's. A cursory survey showed a lot of activity with spelling and other minor changes, but I did not parse the lists in detail.

- P.MacUidhir 00:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

2. Since the 19th century scholars have consistently used a particular standard for Old West Norse names. Ask 10 scholars what the standardized 13th century Icelandic spelling for X is and they'll all give you the same answer. That's why we want to use this standard, it's just about the only consistent one available. Arguably Modern Icelandic is another one but we'll never get consensus for using that in a million years :)

- Haukur Þorgeirsson 23:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Acknowledged on both points. The 19th century standard is useful, but it seems faintly anachronistic to refer to a "standardised 13th century Icelandic set of rules for spelling" in any context outside that of a specialised convention used between scholars interested in texts using that language. That bothers me since I tend to dislike artificial language constructs in general, and in the case of Wikipedia it seems to be going too far into the realm of academia. But we were talking about two different things. What I was comparing in my comments is the body of 13th century Icelandic literature and modern Icelandic literature- one has a uniform set of spelling rules, the other does not, and that 19th century set is an artificial construct in between the two. So, my preference is for modern Icelandic since it is more likely to be understood and identifiable by a greater number of people than any system (uniform or not) of Old West Norse / Old Icelandic spelling.

The one argument I can think of for using a "standardised 13th century Icelandic set of rules for spelling" versus "modern Icelandic" as the basis of spellings used for articles that concern us here is that the former is a static set of rules, whilst the latter is descriptive, and therefore subject to (admittedly very slow) changes as time progresses. In that light, using the 19th century set of rules makes sense since in using that set, we would not need to change article titles en masse in the future if modern Icelandic were to make a substantial change to its uniform rules for spelling, something akin to the fairly recent High German spelling changes made during the 1990s which, for example, changed the (prescriptive) use of "ß" in written works.

In sum, I can see good points to both methods, and assert that trying to determine which of the multitude of Anglicisations used in translated works is ultimately going to provide an inferior set of article titles compared to using one of the uniform sets of spelling rules already in place. Be it of 19th century Icelandic provenance or modern, they both fit what is needed here.

- P.MacUidhir 00:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I can see advantages in using Modern Icelandic forms and it is indeed done in some English translations from Old Norse. A recent translation of Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings springs to mind. And although I'd be personally happy enough with such a solution I think we're much more likely to gain a consensus for the standardized Old Norse forms. Either would certainly be better than the current chaos. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 01:05, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Page move

Why move the page to a more narrow name? Why shouldn't these guidelines just as well apply for historic persons in the same time and space? Fornadan (t) 21:41, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind that. But I think there are other considerations to be taken into account when dealing with historical people - for example there are certain conventions for the names of kings. And for e.g. Norwegian people the Modern Norwegian forms of their names can come into play. But if we achieve consensus on this it might set a helpful precedent for dealing with the wider area of Old Norse names in general. Originally I thought we'd have a better chance of gaining a consensus for the (previous) proposal and having a focused discussion on it if it was restricted in scope. In any case I'd be happy to discuss the wider issue at a page of your choice. Perhaps Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Old Norse) would be a good place. Old English can be discussed separately. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 23:59, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

First Grammatical Treatise

I recommend it for background information relevant to this debate.

Found here: (link in centre of page)

P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 00:32, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Standard Spelling.

From the current text:

For example Veðrfölnir is not familiar to the general English speaking public or even casual readers of mythology. The name can be anglicized a number of ways (Vethrfölnir, Vedrfölnir, Vethrfolnir, Vedhrfolnir etc.) and no particular form is likely to be considered familiar. This falls under the following section in the Use English policy:

I have no problem with Veðrfölnir I do have a problem thought with "The name can be Anglicized a number of ways". "Vethrfölnir, Vedrfölnir" If it is Anglicized it should not have "ö" as that is not an Anglicisation! Can we discuss this further. (That I only have a quibble about this shows how far I think the text has come, or it is perhapse my POV being changed by a reasonable argument!)

One other point. In the Höðr article all the Anglicisations are placed into a footnote. I would like a note added to this guide that if one or two Anglicisation is more prominant in Wikipedia than the others, they should appear in the first paragraph of the article. The redirect pages can be used for this so in the case of the Höðr article, "Hodur" and "Hod" seem to be the most popular Philip Baird Shearer 11:58, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad we're closing in on something you can live with. I also agree that it makes sense to give more prominence to more common anglicized forms, I'll try to do something about that. As for Anglicized forms with 'ö' they may not make much sense but they're still used! For example the Britannica uses 'Höd'. It's clearly not the Old Norse form so it has to be seen as an anglicized form and in fact it has gone through the common anglicization procedure of dropping the nominative ending. The translations by Thorpe and Brodeur (quoted in the article) use the form 'Hödr' which is also not the Old Norse spelling and if it's not an Anglicized form then I'm not sure what to call it. The wording I decided on in the Höðr article is "represented or anglicized". Does that work for you? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 21:45, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

With the exception of the most common anglicized forms as mentioned above, I like the footnote solution as it is done on the Höðr article as it stops the first paragraph becomming cluttered and "represented or Anglicized" I think is a better (more pedantically correct :-) ) wording. Philip Baird Shearer 22:17, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Hah! I knew I'd get to you in the end ;) Haukur Þorgeirsson 22:22, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I agree with Philip's point that it's nice to know something about which forms are most frequently used in English texts - rather than to have a long list thrown into your face.

I've done some research on Höðr. This is not very methodical or very accurate but it may give some idea of the problem.

• Hod (my educated guess is that this is the most common anglicized form in popular works)
• Hodur (seems common online)
• Hoder (seems common online)
• Hodr (an "obvious" option)
• Hödr (Thorpe, Brodeur)
• Höd (Britannica, Lindow)
• Hoth (Hollander)
• Hödur (German Wikipedia)
• Hödhr (240 Google hits)
• Höder (Swedish Wikipedia)
• Hothr (more than 300 Google hits)
• Hodhr (about 200 Google hits)
• Hodh (a few Google hits)
• Hother (a few hundred Google hits)
• Höthr (about 20 Google hits)
• Höth (used in this text: http://www.northvegr.org/lore/poems/02501.php)
• Hödh (almost nothing on Google!)

I somewhat arbitrarily selected the top seven on this list into one group and the rest into a "less common" group. See Höðr. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 17:05, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Haukurth, I don't think they are really interested in establishing the most common English form. In the cases such a form exist it is obvious, such as Thor and Odin. My impression with those who oppose the established standard is just that they are against foreign characters.--Wiglaf 17:14, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

That's clearly one part of it, as we discussed with Mark on Talk:Höðr. But here I'm mostly addressing Philip. As you may remember he withdrew his vote from the Höðr-to-Hodur débâcle in favor of discussing the general convention so I feel obligated to, indeed, discuss it with him. He made the point that it's nice to have some idea which anglicizations are most common - even if the text uses the Old Norse form and that's the point I was addressing here in the context of Höðr. I hope to get Höðr to a state which as many people as possible can live with and then use that article as a case study in the next version of our spelling guideline. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 17:47, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

As I said before perhapse instead of looking outside Wikipedia one can look inside, for the usage and links as a guide to the other names to use.

Also what about Woden, Odin issue? English texts often define Odin as the Viking god and Woden as the Anglo-Saxon god so it depends on context as to which name is used. There were two distinct articles which were merged and the current article Odin implies that the use of Woden is archaic (Old Saxon) Wōden, yet to explain Wednesday, Woden is often still used in schools [1], and it is also used in popular histories like Monarchy with David Starkey and the book which complements the series The Monarchy of England Volume 1: The Beginnings published by Chatto and Windus. BTW, As a side issue it was the use of the code word Wodan used by the Germans for their Y-Gerät system that gave R.V. Jones, the clue that it was a single beam system ( So the spelling of the name is sometimes of great importance :-) ). -- Philip Baird Shearer 20:46, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

That's a good point, Philip. The Odin article is a mess and I don't expect I'll get to it this year or the next so I won't comment on precisely that case. But what's basically the same issue arises in the article on Freyr which I (and Wiglaf!) have been working on for the last few days. In the Old Icelandic texts (which are our most extensive source) the name of the god is Freyr. In the Latin Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum' the same god is called Fricco. In the Latin Gesta Danorum the form used is Frø. You can look at Freyr to see how I'm trying to handle this.

And we have the same thing in Höðr. He's called Høtherus in Gesta Danorum. The account there is actually quite extensive and arguably more extensive than the better known one in the Eddas. Should Høtherus get a separate article? I'd prefer not to since we can't really discuss him without discussing Höðr (and vice versa).

When Baldr was recently moved to the anglicized form Balder (over my protests) I was quite surprised that the people making the move were eager to anglicize Baldr to Balder but did not care to anglicize the Gesta Danorum name Balderus to Balder, a practice every bit as common. Maybe they (like I) felt the need to keep the two names distinct. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 23:51, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Idly searching for "ValhǪll" on the Internet I came upon this: [2] This is a stunningly good article. I'm just not used to seeing that kind of accuracy and the bibliography is just right. And there are others, here's one on Snorri Sturluson [3] with almost no errors. Especially interesting in our context is how the article uses the Old Norse form "Óðinn" throughout but gives "Odin" within parentheses at the name's first occurrence. Their Freyja article [4] is great (and ours is currently terrible but it's on my to-do list).

Could you check that site and see how you like it and if you think we can learn anything from the way they handle the spelling of names? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 14:00, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I've altered Höðr and Freyr to include (also spelt xyz^[1]). I'm interested if this is satisfactory. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:54, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Is a result in sight?

It's now been more than a month since we started this and the discussion seems to have largely come to a halt. Meanwhile I've been operating under a self-imposed moratorium on page moves within the Norse mythology field.

Those who have commented seem to think that the proposal I've written up isn't too bad and no counterproposals have been made. Is anyone working on another proposal? Are there any changes we could make to the current proposal which would make any of you lot happier? I was thinking maybe we could put up a list of people endorsing the proposal, so if any of you have reservations about it that prevent you from endorsing it and you think it's something which we can fix then please come forth :) - Haukur Þorgeirsson 10:41, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Haukurth, I don't think this discussion is really about Norse mythology for those who oppose Old Icelandic spelling. It is just one unrelenting skirmish in a big battle against foreign characters, which is silly since thorn and eth are very English characters. The other side will not give in unless you keep the spelling to the standard characters of the modern "English" alphabet.--Wiglaf 11:28, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

PS. I think you should use the spelling you consider to be right. You know that everyone who is committed to the subject more or less agrees with you. When the POV-pushers reappear, just demand a vote before changing the name of an article. They will most likely fail every time when their demands are not supported by the community.--Wiglaf 11:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe you're right. But it would be nice to prevent another round of requested page moves, indignation and accusations. Even if we carry the day in the end it takes a lot of effort that could be better spent actually improving the pages in question.

And not everyone who prefers using only 26-letter-English-alphabet-without-diacritics characters in article titles is completely unreasonable. Philip originally withdrew his vote on Talk:Höðr to discuss the general case and he's raised some good points here. I feel that if he's happier with the proposed guideline than the previous one then something worthwhile has been achieved. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 11:56, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, frankly. I don't think you are ever going to achieve a guideline where you completely avoid requested page moves, indignations and accusations.--Wiglaf 11:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately that's probably true. But I hope we can try to minimize the wasted energy. The previous guideline was probably hard to follow for people not already in the know and it probably wasn't clear that it was intended to be in harmony with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). I hope the current proposal is clearer and less likely to generate indignation and accusations. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 12:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Wiglaf perhapse you need reminding that Archive 1 WAS the old guideline comments and all! The new one is many many times better.

So far I have restrained myself from making changes to the proposal but have instead raised them on this talk page. However I think I will make a few tweeks and we will see were we go from there. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:56, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

A quantitative test

Everyone here is aware of the limitations of Google tests for determining common use but they have the advantage of being easily available and when their results are overwhelming they give us a good clue. If anyone is interested in a quantitative guideline I suggest the following procedure which can be completed in two minutes for a given name.

I'm willing to concede the existence of a common English name for subject X from Norse mythology if all of the following conditions are met:

1. A search for 'X mythology' on Google yields more than 100,000 hits.
2. No other spelling of the name yields more than 10% of that number of hits.
3. Both the most recent version of Britannica and the most recent version of Encarta have the name under that spelling.

This will easily yield not only Thor, Odin and Loki but also Valhalla, valkyrie and even Asgard.

I think that's probably as much Norse mythology as the average English-speaking person knows.

Does anyone think this would be helpful? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 15:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Philip's changes

Philip made two changes to the proposed convention. One was to remove forms with 'ö' from examples of anglicized forms of the name of the hawk that sits on top of the eagle that sits on top of the World Tree. Philip's position is that a word with 'ö' in it doesn't qualify as anglicized. I can accept that as a valid point of view but then I'm at a loss as to what to call forms like 'Höd' (found in e.g. Britannica and Lindow's Handbook). It's clearly not the Old Norse form and it's clearly a form that's specially designed for English speakers, hence an anglicized form - from my point of view. But I won't press the matter and I won't revert or rewrite this change.

You could phrase it "a from used in English texts" rather than "anglicized form". Philip Baird Shearer

The other change is more substantial. Philip inserted the following:

When it is not practical or aesthetically pleasing, place the most useful and common in the first paragraph and place the others elsewhere in the article. A count of the redirected links from other Wikipedia pages is an indication of what is useful and is often an indicator of what is most common.

There are good intentions behind this but it has a lot of problems, in my opinion. To begin with I think that a count of links from other Wikipedia pages is not a useful indicator of what is most common. Secondly one of the points of having a convention in the first place is to relieve us from the often quite difficult task of figuring out what the most common form is and to prevent inconsistent anglicization procedures within the encyclopedia. As an example the form Hodur (based on the Modern Icelandic form of the name) is almost certainly not the form most frequently found in English texts and to privilege it in the first paragraph is not warranted.

I can sympathize with the idea that the reader might want to immediately see, without having to click to a footnote, a version of the name that uses only the 26-letter-English-alphabet-without-diacritics. But I would prefer those forms to be based on some consistent transliteration practice rather than the difficult and ill-defined task of determining a most common or useful form.

How about we adopt a simple transliteration scheme for determining this privileged anglicized form?

• á > a
• é > e
• í > i
• ó > o
• ú > u
• ý > y
• ð > d
• þ > th
• œ > oe
• æ > ae
• ö > o

This would deliver "Hodr" as the privileged anglicized form of "Höðr". Could you live with this, Philip? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 19:03, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

If the letters "ð" "þ" appear in a word then it is probably worth including a transliteration along the lines you suggest in the first paragraph. As for the rest eg "á" "é" I am not so fussed if they appear in the first paragraph, providing the anglicized forms appear somewhere on the page.

But in general no, because: the most common English usages do not have to follow a sane transliteration scheme from the Norse mythology naming scheme which is proposed as this Wikipedia standard. In this case Hodur was proposed as an alternative page name and a number of people voted for it (more than the total who usually vote on page moves) and it is the most commonly linked alternative in other Wikipedia articles. However I am not wedded to it, if you think that Hodr is more appropriate as a common English alternative to then include that name (and/or remove Hodur), or any other which you think is popular in English texts. Just try to pick no more than three or else it will get cluttered.

As a style thing I think it better if the article name is followed by an alternative in brackets with a superscript than the superscript of the footnote is directly next to the page name. --Philip Baird Shearer 20:02, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I'll reword this in a way I can live with and then you check if you can live with that... If we go by my judgment I'll pick Hod as the most common anglicized form. See my changes to Höðr and see if that works for you. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 20:30, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Adaptation?

Looking at other Wikipedia:Naming conventions it seems to me that they're typically adapted after a discussion like we've had here. I don't see any voting or other formal procedures going on. So, if anyone has something to add to the discussion then please come forward. And if we don't hear anything new soon can we consider the convention adapted tentatively? And if no-one objects before the end of this month does anyone mind if I slap a guideline-template on this? - Haukur Þorgeirsson 12:48, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I strongly object to calling this policy. It contradicts existing policy, and the concerns of those who think we should keep that policy of naming things in the English alphabet on the English Wikipedia are still being ignored here. CDThieme 01:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for expressing your view. I can sympathize with your aversion to non-English characters though I don't think this is the best venue for you to try to overturn the current situation on that. This guideline stipulates that an English-alphabet version should be used for the title in cases where a particular version is in common use in English (Odin, Thor, Valhalla...) It also stipulates that English-alphabet versions should be included in all articles. This is actually more consideration to views like yours than the more general naming conventions give. Philip has unsuccessfully been trying to get something like that into our policy as a general rule. If you add your voice to his maybe you can achieve some results.

If you have some concerns specific to Norse mythology names then please share them with us. If you're concerned about the use of non-English characters in general you would probably achieve more results by commenting on a more general naming convention - maybe WP:UE. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 11:17, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I object here because this is where you are proposing to mandate non-English characters. No other policy or even proposed policy that I am aware of does that. CDThieme 16:02, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Sure they do. WP:UE itself says: "Latin-alphabet languages like Spanish or French should need no transliteration". This is assumed in naming conventions like Wikipedia:Naming conventions (operas) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (manuscript names) and it is assumed in the convention we're discussing here. Non-English characters are widely used in the project. Browse through categories with opera names, or German city names or Spanish people names and you'll see that when the native name is used the native spelling of it is used too (if the language is written with the Latin alphabet). We have articles at Zürich, Łódź, Liège and Lech Wałęsa. If you dislike this, and I think you do and I respect that, the best place to fight it is at WP:UE. This little convention here is only a special case of that convention. If it is changed - for example by eliminating the sentence on no transliteration for Latin alphabet languages - this special case will follow suit. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 16:48, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

STRONGLY oppose also, per Winston Churchill, despite Haukurth's misreading of existing guidelines and misunderstanding as to what is and is not part of the modern English alphabet. No Account 18:12, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The sentence Haukur quotes is in fact in the guideline, word for word. Also, our wikipedia is written in English using the Latin alphabet, indeed the first sentence of WP:UE is "Article titles should use the Latin alphabet". What is or isn't part of the "modern English alphabet" is completely irrelevant, at least as far as our guidelines are concerned. Stefán Ingi 18:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The objections

I fully respect that CDThieme and No Account are entitled to their opinions and I'd like to point out the following. We've been discussing this proposal for more than a month now. Each step of the way I've been asking for input. You have offered nothing. When I propose that we consider the convention adapted you emerge and register your disapproval without offering any alternative or any material input. But if you absolutely insist that we vote on this then let's do that. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 18:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Taking this to a broader audience

Okay, five votes so far. Let's bring this to a wider audience. I'm going to start by contacting everyone who has commented on this page and tell tham that a proposal is up for a vote. I'm also going to post notices on some high-profile Norse mythology articles and on the village pump. If I get to it I might also try some other notice boards and even people who've participated in some previous move votes. I'm going to try to make a neutral "ad" so to speak and also contact people who have disagreed with me in the past. But I obviously have a stake in this so if someone wants to help draw attention to this and ensure that I'm not conjuring up some secret army of people who vote in lockstep with me then that's great :) I'm especially talking to those of you who disagree with me - feel free to bring this to the attention of anyone you think might be interested. - Haukur Þorgeirsson 23:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)